Domestic Violence and the Role of the Church

DescriptionDomestic violence, or relationship abuse, is a hidden problem with devastating consequences for individuals and families. If not addressed, abuse tends to escalate, leading to physical and sexual violence and to hundreds of deaths each year. Well intentioned, but uninformed, responses may increase the risk of harm. The body of Christ has parts that, because of relationship abuse, are not able to fully function. This webinar is designed to help us understand the problem, so that we can recognize it and respond in practical and effective ways.

PresentersBonnie Nicholas, LMSW serves as director of CRC Safe Church Ministry, a ministry dedicated to equipping churches in abuse awareness, prevention and response. Before taking this position, she worked in the field of domestic and sexual violence. Tara Aday is the Director of Prevention and Education at Safe Haven Ministries—the only faith-based agency in the US to exclusively serve women and children who have experienced domestic abuse. She's an expert in working with community partners to better recognize, respond, and prevent domestic violence.

We received in our church mailbox two 4x6 flyers from safe church ministry. If they were meant to reach all members of the CRCNA some 600,000 of these would have been printed. At 5 cents each the cost of printing would have been $30,000 and shipping to 300 churches another $3,000

In fairness I should mention that at the same time the same size flyers arrived from world renew, world missions and disability concerns. A total cost of $82,500.

Surely we can find a more responsible way to allocate the churches resources.

Thank you so much for sharing your concern about the expense of flyers from Safe Church Ministry. I share that concern. Especially in these days of tightening budgets, we need to be strategic and wise in our use of funds as well as other resources. For that reason Safe Church does not send our bulletin inserts to all CRC congregations for Abuse Awareness Sunday each year. We have created bulletin inserts on a variety of topics to fulfill our mandate to increase awareness about abuse. These are made available to view online. Churches who want to use the inserts place orders for them through Safe Church or directly from Faith Alive. It is not the policy of Safe Church to send resource materials to CRC congregations that are not specifically requested. Making the majority of our resources available online helps us all avoid the expense and use of resources involved in producing hard copy. We believe that these bulletin inserts pack a lot of good helpful information into a small space are are an inexpensive way to help build awareness about key issues that affect our congregations. But we will only send them when specifically requested. We are very thankful that congregations choose to partner with us in increasing awareness about abuse and usually request around 20,000 Safe Church bulletin inserts each year. In addition we are beginning to offer these inserts for a fee to non-CRC organizations who have shown an interest in purchasing them. This perhaps has potential to offset some of the costs.

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